ELECTRODEPOSITION OF MAGNETIC FexCo100-x NANOESTRUCTURES

MARIA DEL CARMEN AGUIRRE; ELIANA FARIAS; JOSÉ ABRAHAM; SILVIA URRETA

Valparaiso

Congreso; 12° Congreso Binacional de Metalurgia y Materiales, CONAMET/SAM 2012; 2012

FeCo nanostructures are grown onto plane Cu foils; depending on the solution feed composition and on the electrodeposition conditions, different textures and shapes develop. Crono-amperometric techniques are applied to fabricate these nanostructures from feeds with nominal mol ratios of Fe/Co: 50/50, 30/70, 20/80, 10/90 and 0/100. The resulting materials are characterized by X ray diffraction and the compositions determined by Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The nanostructures with a low Co content are single phase and crystallize in a body-centered cubic cell with compositions quite close to the nominal ones. Samples with compositions above 80 w.% Co are fcc and those of pure Co are biphasic mixtures. The room temperature magnetic hysteresis loops of FexCo100-x electrodeposited onto plain Cu foils are soft ferromagnetic, with coercive fields/forces between 10 mT and 71 mT and correspond to an in plane easy axis. However, larger coercivity values are measured in some samples, when the external field is applied perpendicular to the Cu substrate plane. This effect is evident in layers with a high Co content or in nanostructures composed by short, interconnected whisker-like elements.